Monday, December 15, 2008

Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.

I'm a minor weather geek. Minor, in that I simply can't bring myself to turn on the Weather Channel and leave it on. Geek, in that I want more than the National Weather Service forecast that most of the media use, which is too regionalized.

I've taken to checking most of my raw data from various local personally-owned weather stations that are online through the disturbingly-named WeatherUnderground.com (and who the hell thought that was a good idea for a site name?!?). You put in your zip code, and it spits out, on the bottom, a list of privately-owned weather stations, and their rapid-fire updated history, so that you can see your micro-weather around you.

Yesterday, we had started the day kind of muggy, with a strong south wind blowing up warm moist air from the Gulf. I went into the P.D. last evening to finish preparing an accident report and type in a few call sheets. After an hour, I stepped out to my car to get my clipboard, and was blasted by cold air coming in twice as fast from the north. When my partner came in at 9pm, he looked baffled. "What just happened here?" The temperature had dropped 22 degrees in an hour. I mentioned that the wind had turned.

"Well, it's been windy all day," he said. "That's not the problem." He was shivering in his chair.

"It's not that the wind is blowing-- it's from where it's blowing," I said, and showed him this graph:

I love graphs. They spell out everything for you. Right at 8:00 PM, the wind turned from due south to NNW, and the temperature dropped through the floor. It always surprises me when other people don't notice the direction of the wind.

This morning, it was only down to 21 degrees farenheit, but with a steady 21mph wind gusting to 35 mph, it was brisk, of the like that most folks don't associate with Texas. I've GOT to better insulate this old place.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only personal weather station junkie -- don't have one myself because every time I get ready to buy one I instead get another brick or three of ammo -- but I look at the local ones often. Just decent data, no talking heads.